Latex rubber gloves are well-known for use by surgeons and other hospital and medical personnel. Because the latex rubber gloves are highly stretchable, a single glove size can be donned by different persons having substantially varying hand size and shape. In the past, latex rubber gloves in the medical field have been supplied in standard sizes such as 61/2, 7, 71/2, 8, etc. It is believed these historical sizes developed originally as having a very rough correlation to the circumference of a palm area of the user's hand. The glove length was made proportional to the circumference.
Because of the widely varying shapes and sizes of hands in the general population, a large portion of doctors, nurses, etc. could not get a comfortable fit from a latex rubber glove. This was partly due to areas of the glove being overstretched causing a fit that is too tight, or areas being understretched causing a baggy portion of the glove. Users often found that when a glove fit properly in the circumferential palm area, the glove's hand length, particularly in the finger area, was either too long or too short.
A large number of these latex rubber gloves are sold in a prepackaged sterile condition, and are discarded after a single use. This makes it uneconomical for a surgeon to have a latex rubber glove custom made for his particular hand size and configuration. Some people have very wide hands with short fingers, and conversely others have narrow hands with long fingers. Unlike shoe sizes, disposable surgeon's gloves cannot be economically produced and inventoried in various combinations of width and length. To do so would result in an estimated 50-60 different sizes.